Last Flight of the Blue Baron
by Got Well Soon
Summary: In 1921, the Great War is fading into memory. The infamous Blue Baron is dead and gone, lost in France at the end of the war. Or so everyone believes, until veteran reporter Victoria Chase starts asking questions. Part 3 of The Blue Baron series.
1. Chapter 1

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

The sound a shoe makes on a wooden floor is as important as the way it looks, and here in the empty hallway of the Manhattan Weekly Gazette, the acoustics, and the floor, were perfect. Leather oxfords with a 1-1/2" heel gave just enough lift, were comfortable, and sounded just right. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Authoritative but still feminine. Victoria smiled to herself. She liked these shoes.

Her destination she liked a bit less. This new editor had come back from the war, which was more than many men could say, but he hadn't come back whole. A pilot of some repute even before the war, he'd joined the air service and enjoyed a successful run, cut short when an enemy bullet had torn through his leg. He was lucky to be alive, but he'd returned a cripple, hobbling about on a cane like some ancient geriatric. The paper's owner had taken pity on him, handing over the plush editor position where he could deploy his most tyrannical instincts from the comfort of an office chair. He ruled with a blend of humorless condescension and brutal perfectionism. Worse, he didn't seem interested in Victoria _at all._

She entered his office without knocking, finding him in his usual mode, marking up typewritten articles with a red pen. "Hello, Mark," she said. "You wanted to see me?"

He gestured to a chair without looking up.

She frowned, sitting, and crossed her legs, allowing her cream-colored dress to drape above the knee, showing off pristine white silk stockings. The city's hemlines were creeping upward every year, a trend Victoria felt was to her benefit. Keep ahead of the curve, go a little shorter than most, but stay respectable. She walked the city in bright tones, hatless, felt the men's eyes on her. People noticed when she walked into a room.

But Mark just sat there staring at his papers, his pen working. "Miss Chase," he said finally, looking up. "There's something I'd like you to look into."

"Of course."

"Specifically, there's a rumor. I need you to separate truth from fiction."

"My specialty."

He hesitated. "…indeed. This is a little off your usual beat. I'm not talking about finding out which councilmen are crooked or which tycoon is keeping a mistress."

She laughed, high and sweet. "Mark, all the councilmen are crooked, and all the tycoons keep mistresses. The only difference is in the delicious, sordid details. Don't you know that by now?"

He stared at her blankly, unmoved as usual by any attempt at workplace conviviality. She was starting to think she should move to another paper.

"Does the name Conrad von Preiss mean anything to you?" he asked.

"Of course, the infamous Blue Baron, scourge of the skies." She let her eyes wander the ceiling, cooking up a suitably sensational summary of the legend. "Born of nobility, a hero to his people, a terror to his enemies, invincible pilot and revered commander, brought down in the war's final days by the King's greatest pilot. Larger than life in every dimension, the perfect subject. A real pity he's dead and gone."

"The rumor is, he isn't."

She leaned forward, elbows on her knee, staring at him. The pose she used when she really wanted to let you know she was interested. In this case, maybe she was. "Go on," she said.

"And, possibly, he has come here. Has been here for some time."

"In America?"

"In New York."

It seemed a little far-fetched. She sat back in her chair. "Might I ask where you heard this… rumor?"

He shook his head. "A friend. It's plausible but I'm not certain. That's all you need to know."

She frowned. "It isn't much to go on."

"That's why I'm giving it to you, Miss Chase."

She thought about the headline. The Blue Baron, walking around under the noses of millions of Americans. How had he arrived undetected? What had he done since? Maybe he was making sausages over in the meatpacking district. She wrinkled her nose with distaste.

"I wonder if it's worth it," she ventured. "We do not, exactly, need to _find_ the baron in order to find the baron. We have plenty of Germans to choose from."

He scowled. "Miss Chase, I have told you before that this paper is done trading on unproven nonsense."

She lowered her head. "Of course."

"I need to know the facts. It's possible none of this is true. So your first task is, find out if he's really alive."

"Alright."

"And don't write a word of it. Bring what you find to me."

"But—"

"Thank you Miss Chase. Come see me when you have something." He picked up his red pen and went back to marking up the day's articles.

She sighed, walking back to her own office. Her mood improved as she walked. It was at least an interesting project, a change from her usual routine of disgracing politicians and stoking popular anger at the reigning plutocracy, of which her own family was undeniably a part. Not that that bothered her in the slightest. But here was a real needle in a haystack.

If Preiss were really alive, presumably the Germans would have known, and it would have found its way to the papers already. Maybe, with the war over, nobody on this side of the Atlantic cared enough to notice? It was possible. She turned on her heel and headed for the elevator.

Two floors down, down another hall, and she was in the international department, a big newsroom full of ranked desks. A few typewriters clattered, but it was quieter than most. The reporters here didn't report so much as edit and translate, sifting through sheafs of news wires for their respective countries. Here and there an actual newspaper had been brought by ship, no longer current but more complete than anything that came across the wire.

She stopped in front of the German desk. "Hello Otto," she said.

The old man, hunched over his typewriter, started, then looked up at her, peering through spectacles. "Miss Chase!" he said. "What brings you to us? Come to rake the muck of the Continent?"

"Conrad von Preiss."

"Flying ace."

"Alive or dead?"

"Dead."

"You're sure?"

Otto hesitated. "Shot down in the mountains…"

"They have a body?"

His brow knit. "Hmm. Follow me."

He led her to one of the rows of huge file cabinets which lined the room. Newspapers; the recent history of the world, all in one room. The old man scanned the labels, running his hands along the drawers, until he found the one he wanted. He yanked it open and quickly riffled through to a specific date.

"Here," he said. "I remember when it happened." He fingered through the files, finally pulling up a handful of folded copies of Berliner Tageblatt. Victoria watched over his shoulder, but she couldn't understand a word of it. He flipped through them impatiently, muttering in German. "Aha!" he proclaimed, then began to translate as he read.

"Conrad von Preiss, the army's greatest pilot… shot down… west of the front… possibly captured… of course they do not know." He shook his head. "I am not thinking straight. We need the French account."

Another trip down another row of files, and Otto was reading a French newspaper. The man was fluent in five languages. "Conrad von Preiss… shot down in the hills… difficult terrain… fate is unknown. Interesting." He looked up at her. "It appears the facts are not entirely clear. I do not recall seeing anything further about the man, one way or another."

"I need to know if he ever turned up."

The man scratched his chin, thinking. "Well, we may ask, I suppose. They do keep excellent records. I will send a wire to my contact in Berlin. Let us see what he is able to discover."

She gave him her best winning smile. "Thank you, Otto."

"I do hope," he said, putting the paper back in its file, "that we will find out for sure, and that you will remember to mention my help to your friend the editor."

"Of course." Doubtful.

"It will take at least a day. I will let you know."

So she was back to her usual routine, at least for a while. She returned to her office, put on her coat — muted yellow wool with a white mink collar — and left the old newspaper building for the early evening chill. She stepped to the curb and languidly raised a hand. Not too high. It was possible to hail a cab and maintain your dignity, if you knew what you were doing.

Prohibition, Victoria had concluded, was a tremendous boon. Everyday corner saloons selling beer were gone, replaced by windowless, crowded speakeasies and potent smuggled liquor. Everybody had a connection, a favorite underground watering hole, and when they drank, they drank hard. The sauce loosened tongues and clouded judgement. Powerful men rubbed elbows with beautiful women. And a share of the profits always managed to turn up in the accounts of certain policemen and politicians.

Everybody wanted to believe they were a little more honest than the next guy. And Victoria was adept at helping them believe it. Gossip, rumor, innuendo, scandal. When Victoria Chase came into your club, sat at your table, said hello to your friends, you knew exactly what she wanted. And you gave it to her. You gave it to her so that when next week's column appeared, it wasn't about _you_.

Did she have friends? She might have friends. She knew everybody. She knew how to stay on good terms with bouncers and bartenders. She knew how not to annoy the mob, or not too much anyway. Because people knew her, people _wanted_ to know her.

Victoria boarded the black and yellow automobile which pulled up to the curb. She told the driver to take her to the Landmark Tavern at 11th and 46th. She could get a decent dinner there, spend the evening catching up with the Tammany Hall set. If she was lucky she might run into the mayor, or failing that, the men who'd installed him. So far, the Landmark had never been raided. A coincidence, they said.

It was a short ride to the Landmark and soon she was on foot again. Autumn was setting in, and the temperature was dropping, but the trees still had their leaves. As she approached the discreet door which would take her up to the third-floor speakeasy, she heard a loud, unpleasant drone start up in the distance. She turned in time to see the Caulfield & Price airplane take off over the Hudson, then bank east, over Manhattan. It would have been unmistakable even if they hadn't painted it bright white, with CAULFIELD on the bottom of one wing, PRICE on the other.

Victoria remembered when they'd started up the previous year. It had been the talk of the town for weeks, initial fascination followed by a considerable outcry over the pilot's complete disregard for any concept of basic safety. And, if you hung around west midtown, the noise. Editor's desks were flooded with letters calling for some sort of regulation. But those same editors loved their aerial photographs, and so they had failed to publish the complaints. It was a fundamental truth of life in the city: if the newspapers liked you, you could do no wrong.

Victoria shook her head, turning back to the door and nodding to Charlie the bouncer. He touched his cap in reply, holding open the door.

Everything interesting happened at night, so that's when she worked. Better, she knew, for the complexion, especially in summer. It wasn't until late afternoon that she returned to her office, sitting down to go through the prior evening's notes. Soon after she arrived, Otto burst into her office clutching a telegram. "Miss Chase! I have an answer for you." He began to translate excitedly. "'Captain Conrad von Preiss was discharged from service in Stuttgart, 29th of December, 1918.' The baron is alive!"

Victoria tilted her head. "How is it that this was never reported? Does it say when or where they found him?"

Otto shook his head. "It does not, and the army made it quite clear that no further information will be provided. It seems they have decided to keep the whole matter quiet."

Victoria twirled her blue fountain pen between her fingers, thinking. "I wonder why."


	2. Chapter 2

After von Preiss had left the army, he'd evaporated into thin air. If anyone had seen or heard from him again, they were quiet about it. Presumably, he didn't want to be found.

If a man were hiding in Germany, you couldn't find him from New York. You probably couldn't even find him from Berlin, given the chaos in that country. But what if Jefferson's rumor were true? If a man — or at least a man with the wits and personality of the Blue Baron — were hiding in New York, you might be able to find him. If you knew what sort of man he was.

What sort of man was Conrad von Preiss?

An enigma, at first glance. He seemed to have no past, appearing in the army at the start of the war just as suddenly as he disappeared at its end. His exploits were always covered from a distance, the blue plane much more than the man.

Victoria focussed on the most recent news. All of the reports agreed that he had been brought down in French mountain country by one of Britain's own great aces. A longer piece in a London paper mentioned something else: the baron's attacker also crashed that day, and he had a name, Lieutenant Max Caulfield.

Caulfield. The war had mobilized sixty million men, but there were no more than a few thousand pilots in the entire world. Had this one come to America and started flying in New York? It would be easy enough to find out. Maybe Max Caulfield knew something about his quarry.

It was a short trip to the pier, and Victoria was soon strolling down it toward the white biplane. She'd never visited Caulfield & Price before, and was struck by how out of place their contraption appeared among the boats and barges of the busy New York docks. She could see a pair of mechanics in grimy overalls working on the plane's engine. One stood on a ladder, hands deep in the machine, while the other looked on from the dock, hands on hips. As Victoria approached, she saw that the mechanics were… women? How on earth, or for that matter _why_ on earth, would a woman become a mechanic?

She suppressed a sneer. She needed to make friends. She put on her best, most innocent, wide-eyed affability.

The shorter of the two women, young, brunette, looked over at her from where she stood on the dock. "No flights today, I'm afraid. We'll be open for normal service tomorrow."

Victoria smiled at her. Despite the grotesque overalls, she was rather pretty. "That's quite alright. In fact, I was hoping to speak to your pilot. Max Caulfield."

The taller woman on the ladder silently unscrewed a part from the engine and handed it down. The brunette took it. "Well," she said, scrutinizing the greasy, black metal, "you are."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm Maxine Caulfield. What can I do for you?"

"Oh, I apologize. I had read about a pilot in the war, Max Caulfield, and I thought this might be his plane."

The girl sighed, tossing the part into a bucket and fetching a replacement from a box at her feet. "You assumed correctly. It's her plane all right." She looked at Victoria again. "I suppose there was an error on my army paperwork."

Victoria failed to hide her consternation. "You're Lieutenant Max Caulfield? Sixty-two victories for the Royal Flying Corps?"

"I was. Just a civilian, now."

During the war that would have been a scoop in itself, except that Victoria would have caught hell for disparaging a prominent allied pilot. Now, it probably wasn't worth the ink. She shouldn't get distracted from her purpose.

"Ah, of course. Then, I'm to understand that you… were responsible for downing the Blue Baron? Conrad von Preiss?"

At this, the woman on the ladder, who had ignored her entirely until that moment, slid a vaguely annoyed, sidelong glance at Victoria. Caulfield nodded. "So they tell me. The plane was blue. Can I ask what your interest in this is? I'm not in the habit of being interviewed by strangers."

"Victoria Chase," Victoria said, smiling. "I write the Chase Report in the Gazette on Saturdays." She briefly extended a hand, then thought better of it, contemplating the black grease which covered Caulfield's own.

"Sorry, haven't heard of that one."

Victoria blinked. How could you be anybody in New York and not at least know _of_ the Chase Report? "I cover the evening goings on of the city's wealthy and powerful," she explained, smiling innocently. "In so doing I often find myself forced to report on more unsavory or underhanded behavior. You understand how it is. Men and power."

Caulfield handed the new part up to the tall woman, who plunged it into the engine. "So you're a gossip columnist turned muckraker. Doesn't explain why you're asking me about a deceased German pilot."

"Ah. He is dead, then?"

Caulfield shrugged. "His plane burned."

"In fact I have evidence that he survived the war."

There was the briefest tick of silence before Caulfield responded, but her expression didn't change. "I suppose it's possible," she said. "You still haven't told me why you're asking."

"It's rather exciting news that such a legendary figure did not perish after all. I'd think of all people _you_ would take an interest."

"The war's over, Miss Chase. We should let the ghosts rest."

This wasn't going anywhere. It was so much easier to wring information out of her usual subjects. Drunk, arrogant, boastful, and most importantly, men. Easy marks for a pretty young woman like herself, most of them anyway.

"Can I ask then," she ventured, "do you have any information about the man? Did you ever see him? Know where he might have gone?"

"No. I'm a pilot. I flew the planes. I wasn't especially interested in the rest."

"Ah. Well, thank you for your time, Miss Caulfield. And… I didn't catch your name?" Victoria looked up at the mechanic on the ladder, still rummaging in the engine's bowels. There were streaks of black grease in her hair, where she'd brushed it away from her face.

"My business partner Chloe Price," said Caulfield. "She's a bit busy."

"Of course. Pleased to meet you both. I have been thinking about taking a tour…"

At this, Caulfield finally graced her with a something resembling a smile, and her voice softened. "The city is beautiful from the air, especially just before sunset. You'll need to speak to Molly in the office to book a time. We do offer a discount to ladies."

Victoria cocked her head. She didn't need a discount. "Why is that?" she asked.

Caulfield's brow knit, as if the answer was obvious. "Because women are paid less."

"Ah… of course." This much was true, Victoria's salary from the paper was less than a man's. She could afford a decent lifestyle only with the allowance from her father. She ducked her head. "Good evening."

Caulfield nodded to her, then accepted another greasy part from the plane's engine. Victoria turned and walked down the pier toward the street, thinking. When she heard a murmured conversation and a sudden burst of laughter, she didn't look back. Those two were definitely hiding something. Did it matter?

A female pilot and mechanic, aviation company owners, not especially friendly, not particularly helpful, not entirely honest. Victoria didn't like it. She wanted to pull on the thread, unravel whatever they were about, but it was unlikely to get her any closer to the Blue Baron. Or to anything really salacious for her readers. Still.

She walked up to the office. Inside, the walls were adorned with huge photographs of New York and area landmarks. A large sign listed services: tours, photography, transport, instruction. Behind a desk sat a black-haired young woman, working intently on a ledger, adding a column of figures with a practiced hand. No mere receptionist, then.

Her dress was simple but well-made, cut slimmer than most. A touch of makeup, not too much, accented her natural beauty. Here was a girl with taste. As Victoria entered, the woman closed the ledger and gave her a warm smile, appraising her with clear, confident green eyes. "I see you've met my bosses," she said. "I hope they were polite."

Victoria smirked. "They're lovely. I was so pleased to discover women engaged in such a daring profession."

"Indeed, they're an inspiring pair. How can I help you?"

Victoria held out a hand. "Victoria Chase, I write—"

"The Chase Report, of course, I never miss it. An honor. Although I hope you're not here on business."

"Not to worry. I've made up my mind to take a tour. Miss Caulfield recommended sunset."

"Or just at dawn, but that's not very civilized, is it? Let me see what we have, it's a popular time."

The company's schedule was busy, so Victoria made an appointment weeks hence, and then she was back outside. She didn't even want to take a tour. Flying in that cacophonous, flimsy-looking machine sounded simply awful. And yet, here she was. At least it would make good fodder for conversation.

But she was sure that, whatever inside joke Caulfield and Price had, the office girl was in on it. None wore wedding bands. What did these unusual women get up to when they weren't working?

Most businesses were already closing for the day. Victoria installed herself on a bench a few blocks down the avenue, with a view of the office, and waited. When the girl emerged, she hastily followed, blending into the crowd of commuters hoofing it uptown from their midtown offices.

After covering the better part of two miles, she watched the girl disappear down a flight of stairs from the sidewalk and into the basement door of a modest apartment building. Victoria stood at the top of the steps, intrigued. It wasn't an apartment; there weren't any windows. It wasn't a regular business; there was no sign. She marched down the steps and tried the door. Locked. A private club, then. But not one Victoria was aware of.

As dusk gathered, she crossed to a cafe opposite the door, taking a seat at the end of the counter. Over a cup of black coffee, she watched as more women arrived, singly and in pairs. Mostly working types, nothing remarkable about them, some in work attire, some dressed for a night out. But not a single man. If it weren't for the smattering of short skirts it might be a suffragist meeting.

And, as the evening commute died down, there were Caulfield and Price. The filthy overalls had been replaced by simple dresses and hats. If the aviation business was a lucrative one, you'd never know from its owners.

So. Here was an excessively private club of only women, an evening sort of place, which had remained heretofore beneath Victoria's notice. She paid for her coffee, thinking as she made her way back downtown toward her usual high-society haunts.

She knew just who to ask when it came to the city's seedy little corners. Where she took the high road — spending her evenings amidst the city's upper crust — Smith Walker took the low, dredging the real muck of bathtub gin, cheap girls, and every scam and low-life imaginable. If a place was at all suspect and she hadn't come across it, he probably had.

Victoria appeared at Smitty's desk first thing after lunch the next day. He was one of those men who had a five o'clock shadow at eleven in the morning, perpetually disheveled. He looked up from his typewriter, giving her a lopsided grin.

"Hey Vic. What's up?"

"Need the story on a club in the upper west. Basement level, blank black door, seems like girls only."

"Where?"

"88th just off Amsterdam."

Smitty leaned back in his chair, eyes darting around the ceiling as he thought. "I dunno Vic, there's not much up there. How'd you come across this mysterious door?"

"I followed the office girl from that aviation company. She went straight after work, but the door was locked, I couldn't get in. So I hung around, and more women showed. Some singles, a few pairs. Work clothes mostly, some a little more dressed up, nothing special."

"Huh… wait, all girls, 88th and Amsterdam?" Smitty laughed. "Ah, Vic, that's the Ladies' Uninteresting Underground Auxiliary. Old lesbian speakeasy, got going long before prohibition. Your office girl's a queer!"

"And the owners."

"Caulfield and Price?"

"The very same."

"You ain't kiddin'? Didn't even know they were ladies, how about that. New York's finest aviators, a couple of perverts."

"Did you ever write about the club?"

Smitty shook his head. "Nah. It's right there in the name, it's uninteresting. Plus the dame who runs the place, tough customer, see? Connected."

"Know any way I could get in there?"

He leered at her. "Yeah Vic, I know exactly how you could get in there."

Victoria narrowed her eyes, glaring at him. She wouldn't dignify that with a response.

"What? Guy like me, place like that sounds like the promised land. 'Cept they wouldn't give me the time of day. Why not try one of those girls on for size, maybe you'll like it."

"You've spent too much time in the gutter. You know I don't operate that way."

Smitty leaned forward to his typewriter. "Whatever you say, Vic. Don't sweat it though, there really is nothing interesting about that place. Nobody important goes there, I think they like it that way." He shrugged.

"Sounds like a dead end."

"For the Chase Report? Are you kidding me here? Yeah it's a damned dead end, don't you have a union guy who's in with the reds who're in with the mob who're in with the cops? Who're in with the council who're in with the union who're…" he trailed off, tracing circles in the air with a finger.

Victoria smiled.

"You'll just have to read next week's Chase Report and see."

"Hell, I can't afford this paper."

"Aw, you spent it all on liquor and girls again? Do you need a loan?"

"You know I'm good for it, Vic."

"I know you aren't. See you later, Smitty."

"Yeah, yeah."

Lesbians. The sort of thing that could ruin your reputation, but only if you had a reputation to begin with. Nobody bought papers to read about the everyday immorality of a bunch of nobodies.

And Max Caulfield had shot down the Blue Baron, but didn't know and didn't care what had become of him after that. Victoria needed to start over. She stopped in the doorway.

"Hey Smitty?"

"Yeah?"

"If I'm a down-at-heel German vet, where do I drink?"

"In Germany."

"I immigrated."

"Quietly, at home."

"Wife won't allow it."

"On the job."

"Smitty."

Smitty chuckled, relenting. "It's a pretty long list."

After the beer halls had closed or gone dry, dozens of underground bars had emerged. Grubby, spare little places where a man could still have a drink after a day in a factory or meat-packing plant. Somewhere, in one of those cheap little watering holes, she would find a man who had known the Blue Baron.


	3. Chapter 3

Victoria's apartment was bright and airy, the tall windows of her study framed by pale curtains. She had lined the wood-paneled walls with bookshelves, broken up by enlarged prints of her own photographs. It wasn't a hobby she discussed much in public.

She leaned back in her chair, feet propped up on a desk covered with neatly organized notes and her old Remington typewriter. She held the phone's receiver to her ear, the transmitter balanced on her belly.

"No, Mother, I haven't met any nice boys this week, just like I didn't the week before that or the week before that. No, no they aren't. Do you _read_ my column? Really. _Really._ No, I do _not._ "

It was always the same routine. She was 27 and it was past time she started a family. Did she have a boyfriend? Any prospects? Maybe she had a man on the side, something casual that maybe she should take more seriously? If she did, she certainly wouldn't tell her mother.

Well, why doesn't she come out to the house this weekend, and her father can invite one of the promising young chaps from his factory? Victoria had agreed to that one once. Never again.

"Mother, you _know_ weekends are my busiest days, and I have an extra story I'm working on for my editor, I'm not going to be able to get out there… yes, Jefferson. No, he isn't. _No,_ Mother. He's half crippled, for one thing, and I'm not sure he's right in the head either."

Well she ought to figure something out, because people were starting to talk, didn't she know?

"They've been starting to talk for years. Times are changing, I have a career… no! No it is not part of the problem, it's a real accomplishment for a woman to… Mother! Journalism _is_ a respectable business."

Her father, of course, was simply distraught.

"Is he now? Distraught. Well you'd better put him on the line then. Fine."

Victoria rolled her eyes, relieved. Her father had never been distraught in his life. Eventually he picked up. She let her voice drift to a slightly higher register.

"Hello Daddy. Yes. No, she's fine, she's just old-fashioned. I… Daddy, really, think of the men I write about. They're not even the worst, you know. I know, Daddy, but I do like it here. The hustle and bustle suits me. I should be able to visit once I finish this story. He wants me to find a man. No, a very particular man! I shouldn't say who. The world thinks he's dead, but he isn't. Yes, thank you. Ah, three hundred this month, I need some new things. I know, Daddy. Thank you."

Victoria gratefully set the phone on her desk. She hated these little chats. To hear her mother talk, you'd think producing children and being paraded about on the arm of some nouveau riche industrialist was the sole function of a civilized woman.

Well, time to get to work. She perused the notes on her desk. Her bread and butter was high-society gossip. Bad behavior, divorces, arrests, embarrassments. An illegitimate child here, a homosexual there. She had stacks of it, but that wasn't the good stuff. Hypocrisy, corruption, or best of all, conspiracy. There was the red meat. And she'd be sniffing it out, as always, in the city's speakeasies.

That evening she found herself sitting at one of her usual tables, listening to a half-baked tale of debauchery from some political flunky. She smiled and nodded and figured that few if any details of the fellow's story were true. He was feeding her this nonsense because some patron of his had an axe to grind. Who was the patron? What was the source of the grudge? Once the guy finally shut up, she'd buy him another drink and get it out of him.

In the meantime her mind wandered back to the Blue Baron. He'd been in Germany after the armistice; how had he gotten there after going down in a remote part of France? And why had they discharged him straight away, and so quietly? Caulfield had stood there on the dock with her silent mechanic and shrugged the whole thing off.

Victoria was starting to wonder if Conrad von Preiss had ever really existed at all. Maybe the Luftstreitkräfte had just painted some planes blue and made the whole thing up.

"Miss Chase?" The man next to her at the table.

"Hmm?"

"You were shaking your head. You don't agree?"

"Oh, um, I'm sorry, of course I agree. Do go on." She needed to start touring the bars Smitty had told her about.

It became her late-afternoon routine, visiting grim little basement bars after shift change, when they filled up with young men spending the day's wage. They were little places, and the war had been big. Enormous. She met plenty of veterans, even some who'd been in the air service, but the Baron? No, they'd never laid eyes on the man. His plane, though. They'd seen that plane passing overhead, pointed it out to each other, a symbol of hope for a beleaguered army. They bowed their heads in respect for the fallen pilot. Victoria didn't say what she knew.

It went on like that for days. She was losing hope when she stepped into one of the last bars on her list. Another dim basement with a few glass blocks admitting light from the sidewalk, and a couple of electric lamps. Plain wooden furniture, a makeshift bar, and German flags and beer advertisements hung up for decoration. It all looked temporary, as if the proprietor expected prohibition to be a passing fad, never mind the 18th Amendment.

Inside the conversation was lively, German, and almost entirely male.

A nice tip to the bartender got her a nod in the direction of a table of former soldiers. All young men with close-cropped blonde hair. Strange perhaps that they had immigrated so soon after fighting the Americans, but then, they were probably all conscripts. The army had drafted a huge fraction of the fighting-age population.

Victoria arrived at their table with a round of expensive smuggled beer. She was writing, she informed them, a series of stories about the German side of the front. To highlight their common humanity. To show how terrible it was. Such dashing young men, she was sure. So many fascinating tales. And did any of them happen to serve in the Luftstreitkräfte? Had anyone ever met the legend, Conrad von Preiss?

No. "I was digging a trench, he flew over, once. Just above our heads, ja? We had smiles that day."

But then, from the back. "Herman worked on the planes. He would know."

Yes, Herman, they agreed. She needed to meet Herman Becker, the mechanic. He was a quiet sort. Had never been in a trench. But he claimed to have met the baron. They would make sure Herman came tomorrow.

 _Finally._ Victoria laughed and paid for more beer. Such helpful boys.

The following evening, she met Becker at a little table in the back. He was older than the others, probably around 30, short-cropped blonde hair like the rest. Simple grey overalls over a striped shirt. He looked up at her with visible trepidation.

She smiled warmly, taking the seat across from him. "Hello Mister Becker. May I call you Herman? What's your poison?"

"Ah," he said nervously, "I feel strange allowing a woman to buy a drink for me."

"It's no trouble. You're helping me with my research." She waved to the bartender, ordering two glasses of schnapps. Four times the price of rum. "Are you married, Herman?"

"Ah, no ma'am."

She tilted her head sympathetically. "Still looking for the right girl?"

"I cannot afford it. I am saving to open my own shop, and then I can marry."

"That's very sensible. You'll need a big apartment to fill with children."

Herman smiled timidly. "Ja, yes, it is so. I hope to have a large family."

"So you came out of the war intact. You worked on airplanes?"

"Yes, yes, the engines." He shook his head ruefully. "They were terrible, especially in the beginning. Always it was one catastrophe or another. And the pilots, they were not careful."

"But at least you didn't get shot at."

He nodded. "Yes, I was fortunate. At the end, we retreated early."

"And you knew the pilots?"

"Yes, I always spoke to them about the condition of the aircraft. They were brave men."

"They tell me you served alongside the Blue Baron himself."

Herman broke into a sly smile. "Conrad."

"You knew him?"

"He was the best of us. Serious, always demanding, but… now and then a joke would come out of him, when we needed it most. I could never tell… if he cared at all about the war, or if was just the planes he loved. Always asking questions, always wanting changes, always flying the latest model."

"Have you corresponded with him, since the war?"

Herman's brow furrowed with alarm. "No, Miss Chase, he is gone. Shot down. Didn't you know?"

"Ah, of course. I was just making sure. Can you describe him for me?"

Herman held up a finger. "I can do better." He pulled a wallet from his breast pocket and dug out a small, creased photograph, laying it on the table. "See, we are in front of the plane. Here I am, I am smiling, and he is the serious one…"

Victoria slid the photo across the table and peered down at it. It took a moment to believe what she saw there. She had seen that same stern expression, eyebrows angled in concentration, on a face rimmed with grease-streaked blonde hair. "I know this face," she said, staring fixedly at the image. "This is Chloe Price."

"What? No, that is Conrad."

"What did he sound like? His voice?"

"Ah, a bit high, a strange voice. Harsh in the ear."

"This is definitely her. She was passing… just like Caulfield. She's been hiding in plain sight."

The photo vanished from her field of view as Herman snatched it away. His voice edged with panic. "Miss Chase, I am sure you are mistaken. Who is this Chloe Price you speak of?"

"Caulfield and Price Aviation. I suppose they've been together since they crashed in the mountains."

Herman shoved the photo into his pocket and leaned forward across the table. "Miss Chase, if he is alive, if he has changed his identity, you must not speak of this. No one here cares about us little soldiers but they will care about him and they will ruin him. He is a good man. Please let him be."

She stood, smiling down at at him. "Thank you _so much_ for your help, Mister Becker."

Herman's eyes narrowed. He spun in his chair, barking in German. "Sie hat uns getäuscht. Der Baron lebt noch! Sie wird ihn offenbaren!"

Suddenly the entire room was silent, all eyes turned on Victoria.

She lifted her head, met their stares, and headed for the door. But the bartender, a burly fellow, moved to stand in her way.

"Miss," he said, his voice soft, "were you there? No, you did not go over. You did not see what we have seen. Years of fear, hunger, cold, and death. Then, the influenza." He shook his head. "Leave the war in the past. Do not do this thing."

She glared up at him. "Conrad von Preiss never existed. That woman played you for fools, and now she's laughing at all of us. Get out of my way."

With a sigh, the bartender slowly stepped aside, and Victoria strode out into the cool evening air, already writing copy in her head.


	4. Chapter 4

Here was a real story. Caulfield and Preiss, famous flying aces, false men under false names. Frauds and sexual deviants. And now Victoria would pull them from their pedestals, down into the dirt where they belonged. She smiled to herself.

But first, to report to Jefferson. Mark had told her to bring her findings to him _before_ writing anything. It wasn't like him to much care what she wrote; he was obviously too invested in this one. Lately, he'd been even more difficult to deal with than usual. Hopefully her stunning news would rectify his mood, at least toward her.

On her way into the office she stopped by Smitty's desk. Impressing him wasn't high on her list of priorities, but this was all too good not to share.

"Hey, Vic!" he said, looking up from his typewriter. "You're looking spectacularly smug this, uh…" He checked his wristwatch. "Afternoon."

"The Blue Baron was a woman."

"… the pilot? You don't say."

"And she's alive."

"Really," he said slowly, somewhere between amazement and disbelief.

"And, living in New York."

"What? Vic this is a hell of a bombshell—"

"She's one half of the aviation company. Chloe Price, of Caulfield and Price."

"Are you… sure about this Vic? I hope this isn't one of your infamous bouts of creativity."

"Absolutely certain."

"Damn, you've been busy."

She grinned, preening. "I did have to buy a great deal of beer."

Smitty's gaze wandered as he thought for a moment, then he looked her in the eye. "This is serious news, but what's the angle?" he asked.

"Angle? That we've got the war's most dreaded pilot living right under our noses? And that he was a fraud the entire time, not only a woman but _queer?_ "

Smitty shook his head. "Not sure I see it Vic. It's a pretty good yarn, but are you positive your readers are gonna go for it? You might end up taking a lot of heat."

"How do you figure?" Victoria asked, mildly annoyed. Heat?

"You got a lot of lady readers, Vic. They might identify with the baron, know what I mean? Look up to a woman like that, even if she is a little funny. Plus this side of the pond she's nobody, right? People hate big shots, they love it when you take 'em down a peg, but this pilot, what have they got against her? Her plane makes too much noise? You do your usual scalp job, could go south on you, see."

Victoria thought over his words. Price had stood there in front of her and pretended to be some nobody mechanic. And Caulfield had lied to her face. You didn't dupe Victoria Chase without consequences.

"And you know," Smitty continued, more quietly this time, "even I've gotta admire it a bit. That lady must really know what she's about. No bullshit. Bet she's a looker, too."

Victoria scowled. "Well, it's Mark's call anyway," she said. "He put me on the story, he's got plans for it."

"Christ, Jefferson's still got his head in the war, huh? You spend too much time with that guy, I think he's half loony."

"He _is_ our boss."

"Don't I know it. I got a deadline and he won't let me forget it. Good luck with this one, Vic."

Still scowling, she headed up to Mark's office and showed herself in. Everything appeared to be as it always was: Mark behind his sprawling desk with its inbox, outbox, telephone, papers, but no typewriter. The big oak filing cabinet in the corner, a couple of chairs, a window looking out over 44th Street. Mark's cane propped up against his desk.

And yet, something felt amiss. Victoria had spent her career sniffing out mischief, and she caught the scent of it as soon as she stepped into that office.

She revealed none of her sudden trepidation. She put on a smile, sat down, and beamed at Jefferson across the desk. She had a stunning revelation for him, and whatever was bothering her could wait.

He looked up at her with his usual indifference. "Miss Chase. You look like you've got something for me."

"He's alive, he's in New York, he's actually a woman, her current name is Chloe Price, of Caulfield & Price, she's queer. So's Caulfield, I think they're a couple."

He stared at her for a moment, his brow knit. "I need to be certain about this."

"I've seen a photo of the baron. They're definitely the same person. She had the army fooled, at least during the war. Or they didn't care."

Jefferson actually smiled. Victoria couldn't remember the last time she'd seen that.

"Well done, Miss Chase. Very well done. I'll remember this."

She nodded. "Those are the facts, as a narrative it could be a lot of column inches. I think I may spoon it out over several weeks."

Jefferson shook his head. "Remember I told you not to write a word."

"You said to bring it to you first, and I have."

"And this will be the end of it. Your column can run with your usual material."

She couldn't keep her face from flushing. Her jaw clenched. "You don't plan to report this… at all?"

"Not right now. Thank you Miss Chase, that'll be all."

She glared at him. "So I'm your errand girl now? My column sells half our papers, I'm not some personal gumshoe!"

"Of course not, but it's perfectly reasonable for you to contribute to background research from time to time."

"Contribute? Background? Mark, this is one of the biggest stories of the year."

"It will be. Thank you Miss Chase, that'll be all. I'll expect your column on my desk in the morning."

Grinding her teeth, Victoria stood and left. She had to concentrate on her posture, keep herself from stomping down the hall in anger. Light steps. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Behind her, she heard the click of Jefferson's door lock.

She left her door open and sat at her desk, stewing. Jefferson was new to the business but even he knew that newspapers didn't find things out and then not report them.

Except that that's exactly what she did, all the time. She held back the good story in service of the great story. Was that his game? Use her information to land an even bigger fish? But there were no bigger fish.

And he sat in his office all day. He wasn't out pounding pavement. He never did his own reporting. He was just a wounded pilot who used his position to abuse reporters and make himself feel better. This had the feel of something… personal.

How had he been wounded to begin with? A round from a German plane had gone through his leg.

Who had been flying the German plane? What color had it been painted?

Victoria had a guess.

She put her hands to her face, massaging her forehead, anger giving way to suspicion. It wasn't good when a newspaper man got caught up in a grudge. Bad for the whole business. "Shit," she muttered to herself.

She forced herself to sit and type up the week's column. There were whispers, again, that Arny "the Brain" Rothstein and Tammany Hall were cooperating. And a certain tycoon's daughter had been bundled away to a convent for nine months, and wasn't herself after she returned. One of the tycoon's house boys had been fired and hounded out of the state. They said he'd gone west. In Manhattan, the communists had held a meeting, and Victoria had a list of alleged attendees. Just the usual stuff. No mention of the Blue Baron.

Eventually, as afternoon turned to evening, she heard Jefferson's particular, limping footsteps move down the hall. He glanced at her through the door as he passed.

"Good night," she said, still typing.

"Yes," he said stiffly, "I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Chase."

She waited until she heard the elevator's bell, then pulled her draft from her typewriter and walked down the hall to his office. The door was unlocked, so she walked in and locked it behind her.

Usually he left his desk immaculate, papers neatly ordered, pens put away, everything ready for the next day. Today it was still a mess. There was a red pen lying on a partially marked-up article, and other drafts piled haphazardly about. Victoria dropped her column onto the top of Mark's inbox, then started going through his desk drawers.

Nothing but the usual office supplies. In the bottom drawer, a compact automatic pistol. Loaded, judging by the weight of the thing. Lovely. At least he hadn't taken it with him. Finding nothing else suspicious, she turned her attention to the file cabinet, trying each drawer. Each slid out freely, until the bottom drawer resisted with a thunk. Locked.

Victoria allowed herself a little smile. Here's where the good stuff would be. It was widely known that a clever woman could open most any lock with a hairpin. This wasn't at all true, which is why she owned a nice set of picks. She carried them with her to fancy soirees and society events, in case she found herself alone with a locked cabinet such as this one.

Furniture locks were simple and in less than a minute the drawer opened for her. She stared with disappointment at another rank of neatly organized newspaper documents, but then, what would she have done? She stuck her hand between the hanging files, and felt around the bottom of the drawer.

There it was. Victoria returned to her office with the crisp, unlabeled folder, locked the door, and spread its contents across her desk.

"So Mark," she said to herself, "what have you been up to?"

Handwritten letters, loosely scrawled notes, a few telegrams, a folded map.

She started with the longest, most formal-looking letter. Just a run-of-the-mill message from a friend, with conveyed greetings and news from soldiers still overseas. He must have been an army buddy. But part way down, Victoria found the rumor which had prompted her investigation. Some of the men in the occupation force had asked their German counterparts about the Blue Baron. The rumor over there was that he was alive and had sailed for New York, but nobody knew if it were really true. If he could be found, the friend suggested, Jefferson might have a thing or two to say to the man.

So far, not worth hiding. Victoria moved on to the next letter from the same friend. One paragraph caught her attention.

"I agree that it is unjust that such a man did not die as he lived. It galls me that he may walk among us a free man, unchastened for the terror he wrought upon so many of our fellows, but I must confess I see no help for that now."

Die as he lived?

All of the other correspondence was business. Arrangements to purchase a surplus army plane, nothing unusual there, for a former pilot anyhow. But Jefferson had also been accumulating other toys, the nature of which eluded Victoria. Whatever they were, they weren't easy to get ahold of. What was a "Vickers"? Or a "synchronization gear assembly?" There was some technical discussion of how to properly adjust the latter.

Toward the bottom of the pile, a hand-scrawled note. "Finally able to acquire what you were looking for, just one belt of 250 rounds, all tracers. Whatever you're planning to do with this stuff it had better not get back to me. Meet me tomorrow with the rest of the money." Unsigned.

250 rounds. Ammunition. Victoria finally remembered from the wartime reports. A Vickers was a machine gun, the kind they mounted on airplanes.

Victoria slouched in her chair and exhaled. What would a man do with a fully-armed fighter plane and a grudge? Nothing, if he were sane. She unfolded the map.

It depicted the entire area around New York, and was covered in penciled lines. From Caulfield & Price's dock on the Hudson, they spread out southward along the New Jersey coast, accompanied by scribbled annotations of airspeed and altitude. In the middle of this, Jefferson had circled a large area, and written a single word.

 _Intercept_.

Victoria had to hand it to the man, deranged though he clearly was, he had a good eye for poetic justice. The Blue Baron would indeed die as she lived, taken by surprise in her unarmed craft, victim of a spectacular airborne execution. Of course, Jefferson must know that they'd label him a terrorist and send him straight to the electric chair. Unless he thought he'd be lauded as some kind of hero? Or that he could just fly away, abandon his plane, and never be found out?

Maybe he could. Or could have, anyway, before Victoria had broken into his files.

She considered how best to proceed. The Blue Baron's story was already a gold mine, and finishing it in such a grandiose fashion, the woman shot out of the sky by a maniac newspaper editor, was just phenomenal. Assuming that the maniac editor was apprehended swiftly after doing the deed. This was not guaranteed. If he wasn't, it was sure to be a problem for Victoria. She picked up a pen, idly chewing on the end of it.

She thought about the tall, silent blonde on the ladder, running a peaceful business, not above repairing her own plane. Jefferson finding her defenseless in the air and cutting her down. And maybe Caulfield along with her. All for a bad leg and a war almost three years gone.

A reporter sitting on the news, doing nothing.

The more she thought about it, the less she liked it. Mark Jefferson couldn't even do his own research for this murder. At least the gangsters didn't come to Victoria asking, _do you happen to know, which one is the snitch_? Even when she did know. Sometimes they got the wrong man.

She felt a little sick. _Don't get involved,_ went the adage. _Don't become the story._ Well, it couldn't be helped. She picked up her phone and held the receiver to her ear.

"Hello, number please?" came Margaret's tinny voice. The paper operated its own switchboard.

"Margie, it's Victoria. Did Jefferson make any calls this afternoon?"

"Miss Chase, you know I can't discuss the editor's—"

"Listen, the man isn't in his right mind. I'm afraid he's going to do something terrible. You have to help me find him, it's extremely important."

There was a brief pause, then, "Oh, I just knew he didn't sound like himself. He called the aviation company, Caulfield and Price."

"Did you listen in?"

"I… Miss Chase you know I almost never do, but…"

"I understand, Margie, don't worry about it. Just tell me what you heard."

"He pretended to be someone he isn't. He said he was in south Jersey and he needed to be picked up. He requested one of the pilots, Price, to fly him. Miss Chase, I just didn't know what to do."

"Did you do _anything_?"

"…no. I thought maybe it was for a story."

"It wasn't. When's the pickup?"

"Tonight, 7 PM."

 _"Tonight?"_ Victoria swore under her breath. She had thought she had more time.

"Yes, that's right— _"_

"Put me through to Caulfield and Price right away."

"Are you sure— _"_

"Now, Margie."

"Right, ringing Circle-3-1194"

Victoria waited impatiently, tapping her foot. Why'd it have to be tonight?

"I'm sorry, Miss Chase, there's no answer."

"God damn it. Thanks Margie, I need to go," Victoria said into the transmitter, standing.

"Miss Chase—"

She slammed the phone down, grabbed Jefferson's map, and bolted toward the elevator.


	5. Chapter 5

It was a clear, cloudless night, lit by an almost-full moon. Not a bad night to fly. Victoria jumped into the taxi and slammed the door. "58th an 12th," she barked, "and be quick about it, it's an emergency."

The driver glanced back at her. "Miss, if you're in some kind of trouble—"

"Not me, somebody else! Drive!"

The car lurched forward. "58th and 12th," said the driver, "on the double."

Within minutes they rounded a corner and came in sight of the dock. No plane. Victoria looked around, finding it already in the air, receding into the night sky. But walking up the dock toward a parked motorcycle, in a man's shirt and trousers, was Caulfield.

"Stop!" Victoria yelled to the driver, throwing a handful of money at him. She leapt out of the car and confronted the pilot.

"Is that… is your partner flying the plane?" she gasped. "Where's she going?"

"Yeah, passenger pick-up," Caulfield said, nonplussed. "What's it to you, Miss Chase?"

Price was in the air alone. There would be no passenger waiting for her in New Jersey. "Miss Caulfield, please, you have to call her back. It's a trap."

Caulfield scowled. "There's no way to call her back. But what do you mean, trap? Some kind of scam? She can handle herself. And please just call me Max."

"No, listen, I know who she really is," Victoria said, watching Caulfield's — Max's — eyebrows arch with surprise, "and I told Jefferson, he's… my editor. But, he's insane, a maniac, he's planning to ambush her. To shoot her down!"

Max stiffened, a mixture of disbelief and apprehension playing across her features. "How? A rifle?"

"No, he said he wanted her to die as she lived. He has a plane. It's armed. He has a machine gun."

 _"What?"_ Max exclaimed, looking genuinely afraid. "How is that possible?"

"Military surplus, just like your plane. It's perfectly legal if you can find it. Please, there must be some way to stop him."

"Did you call the police? Do you know where he is? Where he's based?"

"The police won't take this seriously, at least not right away. I know how they think, and airborne maniacs with machine guns aren't part of their usual jurisdiction. I don't know where he's based but I know where he's going." Victoria unfurled the map she'd found, pointing at the area marked "intercept".

Max instantly took it all in. "Fuck!" she yelled in frustration, then started moving very quickly. She turned to the motorcycle, one of the new Harley Davidsons, and rummaged in a saddlebag, producing two pairs of goggles. She handed one to Victoria. "Put these on, I need an extra pair of eyes."

Max quickly donned her own goggles and straddled the machine, then looked up at Victoria. "Well?" she demanded.

Victoria had no idea what was happening. "I'm not sure…" she stammered.

"You said you told this… Jefferson. You caused this, Miss Chase, so you ought to help fix it. Get on or don't but either way I need to go." Max worked the controls, and the motorcycle's engine roared to life, a loud, unpleasant popping. She indicated the tiny second seat behind her.

Victoria briefly imagined watching Max ride off alone into the night, and then reading the rest of the story in someone else's newspaper. No, if she wanted this scoop, she had better climb aboard. She strapped on the goggles and sat awkwardly, her dress riding up to an indecent height, the tops of her stockings showing.

"Hold on." Max commanded.

"To what?"

"Me!"

The motorcycle lurched forward and Victoria no longer had a choice. She wrapped her arms tight around Max's waist.

"I thought I was done with this," Max said bitterly, as they rolled up the pier toward the road.

"Done with what?"

"Intercept missions. Guns. Death." They reached the road and Max hit the throttle hard, the engine grunting as they sped up. She threaded neatly through heavy evening traffic and then found the center of the road, racing down the middle between columns of cars, busses, trolleys, the occasional horse and cart.

It was an extraordinarily unpleasant way to travel. The wind tore at Victoria's clothes, dangerous obstacles loomed on either side, and beneath her the rude machine rattled and belched and generally felt like it might explode at any moment. And the only thing keeping her from ending up a pile of broken bones on the pavement was her tight grip on Max, the warmth and contours of her back and hips apparent through her clothes.

They approached a busy intersection and didn't slow down at all. By the dim light of street lamps, Victoria could see automobiles and a slow-moving trolley crossing in front of them, too close to stop… and she shut her eyes, burying her head against Max's shoulder. They slowed suddenly as Max tapped the brakes, the bike wobbled sickeningly, then they accelerated again, a policeman's angry whistle rapidly disappearing behind.

Victoria kept her eyes shut. They made a few hard turns, horns blared, people shouted, policemen whistled. The motorcycle never stopped. It barely even slowed. Victoria could feel eddies of wind as they blew past larger, slower vehicles, her seat bouncing and jerking as they crossed rail tracks and potholes. It was terrifying. She tried to take comfort in the solidity of Max's body, feminine and slim, but also powerfully steady.

And then they emerged into the open. Their course straightened and the engine roared louder, Victoria feeling the pull of steady acceleration. She opened her eyes. They were on the broad Queensboro bridge, hurtling east into Brooklyn, dark shadows of densely-woven girders whipping past overhead.

"Where are we going?" Victoria shouted above the roaring wind. "New Jersey's the other way!"

Max shouted a reply. "The Model N's not our only plane, Miss Chase!"

They covered ground faster than Victoria thought possible. On the open Brooklyn roads, they whipped through intersections unimpeded, neatly dodging automobiles and pedestrians and policemen and dogs as if they were all standing still.

So this was what it meant to be an ace.

Soon they had pulled off the main road and found their way to a muddy field dominated by an enormous old barn. In moonlight at the edge of town, it would be a tranquil scene, if not for the circumstances. Max pulled up to the huge wooden doors and killed the engine.

"Off," she said.

Victoria climbed off stiffly, grimacing as her nice oxfords sank into the mud. "I've never traveled so fast in my life," she said, her voice a little shaky.

Max leapt off the bike and started hauling at one of the barn doors. "You're about to travel a great deal faster. Help me with this door."

It was astonishingly heavy, but with Victoria's help they got it open. Max threw a large switch inside the barn, igniting hot electric lamps which illuminated the interior. Parked in the center was a two-seat biplane, with a blunt, oversized nose, painted blue. It looked brand-new. Around the periphery of were a variety of workbenches and heavy-duty tools, and a crane hook dangled from the rafters above. Behind all this Victoria could see segments of another plane in parts, fuselage, individual wings. A large, twelve-cylinder engine sat on a stand nearby.

While Max scrambled up into the biplane's cockpit, Victoria ran a hand along the bottom wing. The solid blue color… "Is this… hers? The blue baron's color?" she asked.

Max was climbing down again. "Yes," she said, standing front of the propeller. "We were planning to use it for demonstrations. Maybe have some fun with the next flying circus that comes to town. This is one of the fastest planes in the sky, not like that slow boat we use for tours." She grabbed the propeller and gave it a powerful spin, and the engine clattered to life. "Get in the rear cockpit and strap in. Go!"

Victoria felt lost. Climb into this machine? Strap in? She'd never been so far out of her depth.

Max stood on the lower wing, offering a hand. She looked stressed, but offered Victoria a little smile. "Come on Miss Chase. Once you're in, it's not so bad. I need your help. Please."

It was an awkward climb, but then Victoria was in. It wasn't so bad. She was enclosed by the cockpit up to her shoulders, and belts held her firmly in the seat. Max handed her a leather helmet, then expertly lowered herself into the forward cockpit.

"If you were tying to keep her secret," Victoria asked, "why did you paint the plane blue?"

Max shrugged. "We'd treat it as a joke. A performance. And it's just a color, we left off the insignia."

The engine spun up to full throttle, an altogether more serious noise than the float plane's familiar buzz, and they crept out of the barn, gathering speed as they went. After a short run bumping along the muddy field, the plane lifted gently into the air, still picking up speed. Victoria looked down on treetops lit by the silver light of the moon. It was beautiful. But they had a mission. The details of which, Victoria realized, she didn't understand at all.

"Max!" she called out, shouting to be heard over the engine. "What do you need me for?"

"I need your eyes!" Max called back in reply. "It's hard to see a plane by moonlight, and I have to fly this thing. Just keep a look out. If you see any movement in the sky, any glint of light, tell me!"

"Is this plane armed?"

"No! Of course not."

"Then… if we find Jefferson, what are we going to do?"

"We're gonna ram!"

"You mean, we're going to _crash_?"

"That's the idea!"

Victoria stared for a moment, dumbfounded. _That_ was the plan? They were both going to die. "I did _not_ agree to this!" she protested. "Let me out of this plane!"

"Don't worry, I've done this before!"

" _What?_ You're completely out of your mind!"

"If we're too late, maybe he'll have killed her already, and then we can go home. Is that what you want?"

Victoria bowed her head, fidgeting with nothing to hold onto in the empty cockpit. "No," she admitted.

"You may have a heart after all Miss Chase. Now, watch the horizon!"

Victoria watched. They had turned south and were crossing over Brooklyn, with Manhattan off to the right. As fast as the motorcycle ride had been, the plane was something else entirely. It didn't _feel_ that fast, but if she looked down she could see just how quickly they were covering ground. And they were still climbing, now high above the tallest downtown skyscrapers. The wind was getting noticeably colder.

Victoria couldn't help looking down at Manhattan, her home. A million lamps burned, small smudges of light stretching off to the north, mankind's answer to the innumerable stars arrayed above. If she ignored the roaring of the engine and the rush of the wind, she could almost see the appeal of taking to the sky.

They passed over the southern tip of land. Below, the water was dark except for the pale glimmer of reflected moonlight. To their right, the sparsely-populated Staten Island, and ahead, the New Jersey coast. Victoria was amazed at how far she could see. She'd never even been to Staten Island, much less New Jersey.

She resumed watching the horizon. With no lights on the plane, she could see why it would be hard to spot one anywhere in the huge volume of the sky. After a while she started to think they'd never find their quarry, and would return to New York in failure. How would Max react? How would the city react? New Yorkers might not universally love Caulfield & Price, but the plane had become a fixture of the city's landscape. People would take the attack as a personal affront. Jefferson might not even live to see his own trial.

A glint of moonlight, something ahead of them and below, over the water. Victoria squinted, staring at the point in the sky.

And then it came into focus. The palest silhouette of a plane, turning above the water.

"There!" She cried. She started to point, but it felt that the wind might take her arm off.

"Where?" Max called back. "On a clock, if 12 o'clock is straight forward, what time?"

"Ah… 10:30!"

"Altitude?"

"I don't know! Below us."

The plane banked and turned toward the plane Victoria had seen, then the nose angled downward. Victoria could see Max craning her neck, looking forward through the propeller's arc.

"I see them," Max said. She didn't shout, and Victoria could barely hear her. "She's running out of room." They adjusted course slightly. Now Victoria could see both planes, the larger pursued by the smaller. They were turning, circling each other, not far above the water. A slow dance in the moonlight. Suddenly, a burst of light as a stream of white-hot tracers arced toward the float plane.

 _"No!"_ Max cried. Jefferson had opened fire.


	6. Chapter 6

Victoria imagined how it would look, Price's plane erupting in flames and plummeting into the dark water.

But if Jefferson's shot had connected, he hadn't managed to hit anything vital. The float plane continued its arc, constantly turning to escape, and the stream of bullets ceased. Victoria winced as the sound of the gun finally reached her ears, a harsh rap delayed by distance but clearly audible over the engine's drone.

Ahead of her, Max worked the controls and the plane angled into a steeper dive. As they bore down on the two combatants Victoria got her first sense of how fast they were really going, their target mere seconds away.

"Miss Chase," Max called, not turning her head, "I have to apologize!" As she spoke, their own engine grew louder, increasing in pitch, puffs of orange fire dancing around the exhaust ports. "I had hoped to do this properly and preserve our plane." The whole thing was beginning to shake, wings rattling above and below, and Victoria's seat bucked sickeningly as they made sharp course corrections. "However," Max continued, "it seems we don't have time for that! Get ready!"

Before them, Jefferson's plane was turning in their direction, lining up another shot on Price. Only at the last moment did he seem to notice the new entrant, dodging their approach by turning steeply downward into his own dive. But Max moved with him, their engine screaming as she drove down on him from above. For the briefest moment Victoria caught a glimpse of the man in the cockpit, looking up at them, and then they were upon him and the world exploded around her.

She must have shut her eyes. Her only impressions were the sudden shock of impact and the ripping sound of their propeller shredding wood and fabric and everything else, the scent of fuel and metal and something burnt, and then she was spinning, pinned against the side of the cockpit in darkness. She reflected that getting onto Max's motorcycle was the most foolish thing she had ever done, and now someone else would publish the true story of the Blue Baron, because she was going to die.

Her body would never be found. Her parents would think she'd run away, maybe gone out west like so many of the city's more rebellious sorts. Her father, perhaps, would be distraught.

But then, remarkably, the spinning stopped, their plane settling all at once on a stable trajectory. Victoria opened her eyes.

She had time to notice the missing sections of left wing before she realized how far they had fallen. Dark ocean filled her view.

 _"Brace!"_ Max shouted, as if that meant anything to Victoria, and they slammed into the water. The restraints crushed her body, wringing the breath from her lungs, and then they were still, and she was alive.

Bruised and wet, but alive. They rocked gently on a calm sea. Water pooled around her ankles. She looked out at flat, black water stretching away in all directions, a faint glow from the city visible over the horizon. They were miles out. Even if she had known how to swim, there was no way she could make it to shore, and their ruined plane was already beginning to sink. The outright terror of the crash was replaced by a clear, cold dread.

In the forward cockpit, Max was undoing her straps. She stood stiffly, grunting and rubbing her neck, then turned to face Victoria wearing a relieved grin.

"Thank you for the spot, Miss Chase," she said, lifting her goggles from her eyes. "Not quite an ideal result, but the day is ours."

As Victoria struggled to find words for what should have been obvious, that they seemed to have crashed their plane far out in the Atlantic ocean, Max's eyes lifted to something above and behind her. Her smile widened. Victoria hadn't noticed the approaching sound, and she startled as the float plane buzzed over their heads. It seemed close enough to touch.

They both watched as it arced around, then leveled off and gracefully set down on the water not far away. It reached them a minute later, a wing float bumping against their fuselage.

Max reached up and patted the wing affectionately. "Chloe picked this one out," she said. "In the war I never thought much of the Navy planes, but at the moment I can't think of a better trick."

Victoria's throat was tight. After all the pent-up fear her relief at this timely rescue was overwhelming. She focussed on unfastening the straps which held her in place.

Max hoisted herself up onto the lower wing, then offered Victoria a hand. From the forward cockpit, Price — unreadable in helmet and goggles in the dark — watched as Max helped Victoria into the rear cockpit and fixed her belts for her. That done, Max crept forward under the upper wing, leaned over the forward cockpit and… kissed Price. Not a quick greeting, not a little thing, not the sort of kiss even a married couple ought show off in public, much less a pair of women. Victoria watched, then looked away, then watched again, fascination winning out over embarrassment.

At least Smitty wasn't there to harass her about it. Max lifted her head and addressed Price in low tones. Victoria strained to hear over the idling engine.

"You checked the other wreck?" Max asked.

Price nodded.

"Alright." Max turned and sat down on the wing, wrapping arms and legs around one of the inter-wing struts. On cue, the engine spun up to full throttle and they lifted into the air. Looking over this new plane, Victoria saw a scatter of bullet holes across the right wings. Jefferson had been close.

It was an uneventful trip back to the city, Price keeping to a low altitude. Max sat casually on the wing, legs dangling into the air, once even freeing a hand and turning to wave back at Victoria. When they pulled up to the Caulfield & Price dock, the engine finally silent, Victoria felt a fresh wave of relief wash over her. Soon she'd have her feet on solid ground again.

Max hopped down from her perch and tied up the plane, while Price climbed out of her cockpit and came to free Victoria.

"Ah," she said in a district German accent, "the reporter. Maxine, why is there a reporter here?"

"She's helping!" Max called from below.

"Helping. This evening is not becoming less strange. Hold my hand Miss Chase, you appear to be unsteady."

With Price's help, Victoria made her way down to the dock. Not quite solid ground, but an improvement anyway. The two pilots immediately removed their helmets and goggles, and Victoria gratefully followed suit.

Price stopped before Max and did a little twirl on the ball of her foot, truly unhurt. "You have finally repaid me for the first time I got into bed with you!"

Max laughed, but shook her head, gesturing at Victoria. "Chloe…"

"Hmm, yes. Maybe we should have left her in the ocean."

Victoria was having trouble focussing. She began to protest, but her wit had deserted her. "I… helped. If I hadn't…"

Max turned serious. "She told me Jefferson was going to attack you. She's why I was there, and she came along as a spotter."

Chloe turned to Victoria. "Who is Jefferson?"

"Mark Jefferson," said Victoria shakily, "my editor."

"I have never heard that name. He was shooting at me because…"

"I think… you crippled him in the war."

"Was that all? He was alive!"

"Was?"

Max looked pained. Price shook her head. "In truth, we would not have left him. Even in the war, it was better to capture the pilot. But…" she turned to Max, putting a hand on her back. "often, a soldier can only be stopped one way. He was still in the war, in his mind."

Max nodded reluctantly. After a pause she said, "Also, Miss Chase is the one who uncovered your identity. She told Jefferson about you."

"Ah," Price said, her voice hardening. She straightened, looking down at Victoria as if she were an unruly child, suddenly every bit the legendary commander. "A foolish error, an effective atonement. It seems I have two things I must say to you."

"Yes?"

A rush of movement, a loud smack, and Victoria spun to the side, instinctively grasping her jaw, pain blooming across the side of her face. It reminded her of another time, with her mother. Below the temple, so as not to leave a mark. It wouldn't do to give your daughter a black eye.

"That," said Price, "was for telling my secret, almost getting me killed, and destroying a fine airplane which I had worked very hard to get running." Then her tone softened, and she smiled. "Now we are all done with that, I will say, thank you for helping Max to save me. I hope that we can be friends."

Victoria grimaced, still rubbing her jaw. She was losing her grip on what little composure she had left. "I can't… I need to sit down. I'm…" Falling apart. Victoria Chase was falling apart. Her leather oxfords were ruined, her stockings ripped, her silk dress damp and rumpled, probably permanently. She smelled of seawater and gasoline.

"You've got the first-timer's shakes," Max said, gently. "Happens to everybody."

"Not me," objected Price.

Max rolled her eyes. "Most people. You need some food and something to drink."

Yes. Victoria rubbed her forehead, considering. She could _not_ be seen as she was. "I know a place nearby that's… badly lit. Private. Mostly gangsters."

Price grinned. "Perfect!"

It was only a few blocks. Nobody recognized her on the way. Like so many of the more discreet speakeasies, this place was just a blank basement door with a little hatch for the bouncer to peer out. It slid open to Victoria's knock.

She didn't wait for him to greet her. "Frank. It's me, let me in."

"You I know, who're the broads?"

"They're… friends."

"Yeah? They don't _look_ too friendly, Chase. Almost look like the fuzz."

Victoria took a deep breath, steeling herself. Frank was always like this. Show sufficient determination, and he'd back down. "You think I don't know who I'm with? Open up, you're better off with us in there than standing out here on your doorstep."

"Alright, alright." The door unbarred with a thunk, and opened for them. Frank, dapper as always, looked her over. "Jesus, Chase, what the hell happened to you?"

"I fell down some stairs."

"What, into the river?"

"Right into the river. These ladies fished me out. We need a private booth and a bottle and something to eat."

"This ain't a restaurant, Chase."

She sighed. "If Boss Murphy came in here and asked for a sandwich, would you find him a sandwich?"

"Well, yeah, but that's—"

"Find me a God-damned sandwich."

He stared at her. Then he grinned. "Sure, you got it, Chase. Right this way, ladies."

Soon they were safely ensconced in a dim, wood-paneled booth, curtains drawn. Frank had set down a bottle of rum — good stuff which had actually spent some time in a barrel — and dispatched one of his boys to rustle up some food. Victoria would owe him, she supposed, but it wouldn't be a hard thing to settle. Frank knew better than to push her too far.

The pilots sat across from her, and Price poured shots all around, knocking back her own enthusiastically.

"To Max's sixty-third victory," she intoned. "Seventeen more and she will catch up with me!"

Max groaned and sipped at her drink. Victoria lifted hers, but her hand shook, cool liquor spilling over her fingers. She swore and quickly set down the half-empty glass.

Price simply smirked, but Max gave her a sympathetic look. She came around to Victoria's side, sliding up next to her and holding her hand to steady it. Together, they got the drink into her. Victoria sighed and held on to the edge of the table. It didn't sway or buck or move at all. The bench beneath her also did not move. She found this enormously comforting, and she started to feel a little more collected.

She regarded her new "friends". Having both narrowly escaped death, and apparently killed a man, they were terribly calm. A little tired, a little melancholy, like it was all just a bad day at work. How many close scrapes like this had they had, in the war?

Max addressed her.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that. I really did need the spot. If I'd missed them and overflown…" she shook her head, frowning. "How did you find out about his plan?"

Victoria smirked, recalling her anger earlier in the day. It seemed so far away. "He killed my story and I was suspicious, so I broke into his files. The plane, the gun, the ammunition, it's all in there."

"Which story?" Price asked.

"You, of course. Conrad von Preiss, the Blue Baron. With Jefferson, ah… out of the way, I can run it. Everyone in New York will be looking for a copy of the Gazette."

"No," said Price, flatly.

"Miss Price—"

"Chloe."

"—that little show was visible for miles, and some of the wreckage is sure to wash up on the beach. Tomorrow morning every paper in town is going to report it, and sooner or later they're going to start asking you questions. There are bullet holes in you plane. Jefferson is gone. There are people in New York who will recognize you. Your little secret is going to come out and there's nothing any of us can do about it. With my story, you'll have it all over and done quickly. I'll be doing you a favor."

Max shook her head, visibly upset. "That is _not_ a _favor._ "

"The ending is the best part," Victoria continued. "Ace pilot Max Caulfield sacrifices her plane to save her former nemesis, now business partner and lover, from an insane war veteran. Some people will think it's very sweet."

"And some people will want to lynch Chloe," Max protested.

"And we will lose all our customers," Chloe complained.

"But it's nothing more than the truth," Victoria said, smiling innocently. A line she often gave to the aggrieved subjects of her column. It didn't feel so good, this time.

"The truth," Chloe spat. "The truth is that I have come to this country, which sent its men to crush my army and whose soldiers _still_ occupy my homeland, to live in peace and forget the blood on my hands. The truth is that I cannot be at home, even here, because always it is the same, 'Miss Price, where is your husband? When will you marry?' and I am not able to be what they want me to be."

"Chloe—" Max began to interject.

Chloe ignored her. "The _truth_ is that there was no glory in that war, only terror and pain and death. Who made Jefferson into what he was? Not me. It was the men who sent him into the air. The men who sent me to destroy him. The Blue Baron is their creature, not mine. I am just a pilot."

Chloe poured herself another shot, swallowed it. "Conrad von Preiss is dead, Miss Chase, and he should stay dead. You do not want to bring the war to New York." She paused, then added, "More than you have already."

Max, her face anguished, reached across the table and took Chloe's hand. It was as tender a gesture as Victoria had ever seen. She acted like it was such a normal thing.

Then she turned to Victoria. "The baron _has_ to be dead. He can't be here, alive and well in America. The Americans won't like it, the Germans won't like it. He had to die in battle."

She was sitting so close, with that pleading look… Victoria looked down at the table. "I don't know," she said. "I need to think about this."

The curtains of their booth drew back and Frank appeared, trailed by a young man bearing a tray loaded with plates. Victoria blinked up at him in genuine surprise.

He took in the scene and frowned. "Christ, this has gone from bad to worse. Hopefully some fuckin' eats'll cheer you girls up, I got the automat's finest here. We got a sandwich, mac 'n cheese, whole bunch of pie…"

"What kind of pie?" asked Chloe, suddenly alert.

"Ah, I dunno. Here, just take it." He gestured, and the man set the tray down on the table. Victoria stared with some amazement at the random assortment of food. Some of it was even hot. Chloe immediately claimed a slice of coconut cream pie.

"Put it all on my tab, Frank," Victoria said.

"Yeah, 'your tab'," Frank said, shaking his head, "that's fuckin' hilarious."

"Now please go away."

He stood for a moment, uncertain. Then he went away.

"I like him," Chloe said around a mouthful of pie.

"He's a truly awful person," Victoria said, selecting a plate of baked macaroni and cheese.

Chloe shrugged. "He has good taste in pie."

Very late that night, in her study, Victoria reread the story. She was freshly bathed and dressed in a loose, comfortable dressing gown, some bruises starting to show but otherwise feeling worlds better. A half-empty cup of coffee cooled, forgotten, on her desk. She'd have to get up early to rouse the typesetters to action; rush jobs were usually the province of the daily papers. But if they worked fast, they could have a one-sheet extra edition out on the street by mid-afternoon, full of answers to the questions raised by the morning dailies' reports. The newsies would have a field day.

Written out in longhand, the text was a nearly illegible mass of strikethroughs, between-the-lines insertions, and margin notes. At the top of this she'd left a long, empty underline. Normally the headline was the editor's responsibility, but she lacked one at the moment. When the cry went up across New York, "Extra! Extra!", what would follow it?

How to introduce the story of the most dangerous pilot who ever lived?

Victoria fed a sheet of paper into her old Remington, and began to type.


	7. Chapter 7

**LAST FLIGHT OF THE BLUE BARON**

* * *

 **Rogue American attacked local aviators, foiled by German**

* * *

 **Infamous pilot survived war but is now certain to have perished**

* * *

 **Called a Hero**

* * *

This morning the city awoke to reports of an aerial gun battle, or "dog fight" as they were known in the war, just south of the city off of Sandy Hook, New Jersey. As incredible as this news appears, it is nonetheless a fact, and this paper further has an eye witness to the event in the person of Victoria Chase, regular author of the Chase Report.

The reports this morning were incomplete and got several things wrong, and must firstly be cleared up. The battle was among three planes, not two, only one of which had any armament. Two of the these were destroyed and their pilots lost, but the well-known plane of Caulfield & Price was also part of the action and has returned to us with minimal damage. Citizens of New York may rest easy knowing that the attacker was among the destroyed.

Prior to last night's calamity, we were able to learn that Conrad von Preiss, commonly known as the Blue Baron and widely thought killed in 1918, in fact survived and was discharged by the German Army directly after the armistice. Remarkably, it has turned out that the man immigrated to the United States under an assumed name, and has lived among us obscure and unknown all this time.

Preiss however was unable to entirely give up his great passion for powered flight, and once established here he purchased a surplus aircraft, a very fast light bomber type, from the army. He went on to paint this craft with his signature blue color, perhaps thinking no one would expect him here, which seems to have been the case as he was not until recently discovered. However, despite his fearsome reputation, Preiss's intent seems to have been peaceful and he was not the cause of the melee.

The instigator of the battle was one Mark Jefferson, formerly a pilot for the United States Army and incidentally employed as a minor editor by the Gazette. Little is at present known about the man, but what is certain is that he was crippled while in flight over Germany, the victim of an enemy round piercing his cockpit. Whether he was of unsound mind before this injury cannot be known, but he returned from the war in an unstable and dangerous state, and plotted to carry out a series of gruesome aerial attacks.

Through entirely legal channels, Jefferson acquired a surplus fighter airplane as well as a heavy machine gun, military ammunition, and other necessary parts to arm the plane. Having completed this project, for reasons comprehensible only to his damaged and raving mind, Jefferson chose the pilots of Caulfield & Price Aviation as his first targets.

Yesterday evening, as the Caulfield & Price plane was on a routine flight south over the New Jersey coast, Jefferson put his plan into motion. He ambushed the two pilots, pursuing them and opening fire in the air, using tracer ammunition which was visible to observers on the shore. Fortunately, pilot Price who was at the controls is more capable than most, and was able to avoid the madman's fire, drawing him farther out to sea and away from crowded areas. At this point it was a one on one fight, with only Jefferson armed and in a smaller, more maneuverable craft, and given enough time it seems inevitable that the attack would have been successful.

But this is not how it played out. As part of her investigative work our own Ms. Chase was able to learn of Jefferson's plan, and informed Preiss about it even as Jefferson prepared his ambush. The great German pilot knew instantly what would proceed, and determined that he would not allow the madman to gun down innocent pilots unopposed. He immediately took to the air in his own craft and made top speed to the scene.

Despite his plane's swiftness, he arrived only after Jefferson had begun shooting, finding the two planes locked in a circling dance of death. Preiss dove at them out of the sky, coming upon Jefferson suddenly and without warning. With no thought to his own safety, he smashed his plane full-force into the attacker, instantly destroying both craft. The wrecks fell into the sea with no chance of survivors.

Thus freed of the assault, Caulfield and Price were able to return to Manhattan, their plane pierced in a few places but, we are told, not genuinely harmed.

This then is the complete story of last night's battle. The Blue Baron's final act was one of self-sacrifice in the name of peace for his adopted homeland, and those who have hated him must take this new fact into account. Had Mark Jefferson not been stopped at the start, we cannot know what terror he might even now be raining down on New York from the sky.

Reached for comment on these extraordinary events, Police Commissioner Enright points out that the police are not equipped to deal with military aircraft. Because the battle did not take place in the State of New York, and in his words "appears to be resolved", no investigation is planned. State of New Jersey authorities similarly washed their hands of the matter, noting that the attack took place off the coast and therefor lies within the purview of the Navy.

Commander Holden of Naval Air Station Rockaway reports that a patrol was dispatched this morning to look for survivors, but finding none, it returned to base with no further action planned. Holden had this to say: "The United States Navy is not a law enforcement organization and so we have no further involvement with this matter. I'm sorry to hear about the loss of von Preiss but am grateful for his sacrifice. The man is nothing short of a hero. I know and respect both Caulfield and Price and am relieved to hear that they are unharmed."

 _The Manhattan Weekly Gazette, Extra Edition, October 6, 1921_

* * *

The cafe was mostly empty in the late afternoon. Victoria sat at the end of the counter, near the window, and ordered a coffee. Her article and the supplementary information surrounding it had been a smash, ultimately syndicated nationwide. That Conrad von Preiss had come to America and died a hero was now a matter of unquestioned fact.

Smitty had held up the extra edition, a quizzical look on his face.

"This doesn't quite match what I heard earlier," he'd said.

Victoria had just smiled at him. "I suppose you'll never know which is the truth."

"I suppose I won't."

With no editor and the paper abuzz with fresh activity, she'd been twice as busy as usual. The day of her scheduled tour with Caulfield & Price had arrived and she'd found herself entirely unable to go. She couldn't face climbing into that airplane again, her own fear thrown into harsh relief by Max's easy confidence. She imagined Chloe standing on the dock, smiling condescendingly up at her as she buckled in with shaking hands. She couldn't do it.

Two days later she'd received a letter from Max, thanking her for her exemplary reporting, regretting that she'd been unable to honor her appointment, and offering a complimentary tour at a later date — or, if she'd prefer, a flight lesson. Victoria had sat at her desk for a long time, staring at the letter. Eventually she'd shoved it into a drawer and tried to forget about it.

Then she'd found herself in this little cafe. The street thronged with commuters, but though gaps in the crowd she had a decent view of the steps leading down to the blank door of the Ladies' Uninteresting Underground Auxiliary. It wasn't much to watch, handfuls of women coming and going, nothing at all worth writing about. Nevertheless, here she was, watching. Again. Wondering what was behind that door. It was the normalcy of it that threw her. Even the nicer speakeasies were rough places, you had arguments, fights, gangsters, drugs, prostitutes. None of that here, as far as Victoria could tell.

She sipped at her coffee, black and bitter.

Outside, it had started to rain. A sea of umbrellas unfurled, and the unprepared hunched their shoulders and hurried toward shelter. It looked cold out there.

A draught blew across her as the door swung open. Behind her, someone shook off their umbrella, then came to sit beside her at the counter. Victoria scowled; there were plenty of other seats.

She glanced over to a young woman. Short, wearing a simple wool vest over a pale cotton blouse, and a wool skirt. Black hair peeked out beneath a grey cloche hat adorned with a pair of flowers. A practical, inexpensive, and entirely modern ensemble. It worked well with her figure.

The girl ordered a coffee, and when the man behind the counter had gone to fetch it, she looked at Victoria and smiled. Molly, the office girl from Caulfield & Price. One of _them_.

"You've been watching us for a while," the girl said. "Did you ever think to say hello?"

Victoria huffed. "Maybe I just like the coffee."

"Oh yes, the finest blend of dishwater and cigarette ash."

Victoria let out an involuntary chuckle, then took a sip. Dishwater and ash, indeed. "At least it's hot," she said. "I'm fairly certain you've just ordered a cup yourself." On cue, Molly's coffee arrived, set unceremoniously before her in a cheap, stained cup.

"Oh dear," Molly said, frowning at the steaming beverage. "I hope you'll keep me company while I endure this."

Victoria set coins on the counter and turned to leave. "I need to get to work," she said. She shouldn't have laughed at the joke. She hadn't meant to be spotted in the first place.

Molly pouted. "It's just a cup of coffee, Miss Chase."

Victoria hesitated. The truth was, she didn't have anywhere to be. Nothing interesting was going to happen until after dinnertime, at the earliest. And rain usually meant a slow night.

She turned back toward the counter, gesturing for a refill.


End file.
